Weak data foundations could hold back Philippine AI push, World Bank warns

Ah, marvellous. The World Bank has looked at the Philippines' dash for AI and delivered the kind of verdict that makes a person want to pour a neat whiskey and stare at the ceiling. Policymakers, it seems, are 'racing to regulate AI outputs and outcomes' — which is a bit like issuing speed limits for a motorway you haven't built, on the say-so of a government that hasn't decided who owns the land. The Bank's metaphor of 'regulating vehicles without roads or fuel standards' is almost too kind. In reality, the Philippines is being asked to choose between building data roads and regulating imaginary flying cars, and it has evidently chosen the flying cars.

Apart from anything else, notice the phrase 'data availability, quality, and governance.' These are not technical footnotes; they are the difference between an AI that sorts out hospital appointments and an AI that hallucinates a hospital. The World Bank is pointing out that the entire AI push is being built on a foundation that resembles a potato field in a drought. And what is the response? 'Reforms covering data infrastructure, trusted data-sharing policies, and institutional arrangements that clearly assign responsibility for data stewardship.' Good lord. That is the most ambitious rebranding of 'we don't actually know who is in charge of the data' I have seen all quarter. 'Institutional arrangements' is the kind of phrase that should be filed under 'we will absolutely be having a committee to discuss having a committee.'

The most damning detail is that the Bank felt the need to say this at all. It means the default assumption in the Philippines is that AI regulation is something you can bolt onto a country the way you'd bolt a spoiler onto a hatchback. It also means the World Bank, an institution not exactly known for radical thinking, has basically accused the government of building the policy equivalent of a castle in the air. But nobody will listen, of course. They will wave the latest AI strategy document, which will be full of beautiful words like 'stewardship' and 'trusted data-sharing,' and the roads will remain unpaved, and the fuel standards will remain unwritten, and the vehicles will be regulated to within an inch of their nonexistent lives.